Thread by @gravislizard

so like everyone understands that viewers writing in to complain about TV episodes is as old as TV, right

like

it goes back 50 years

the only reason anyone cares now is because people keep writing about it and making it news when it wasn't otherwise gonna be news. tv producers have been ignoring these letters since, like, i love lucy

prior to that people were writing angry letters to radio stations, and before that they were writing angry letters to authors, and before that patrons forced their artists to make work that made them feel good

the part of this that is an "internet problem" is that there are now 400,000 "news sources" massively oversaturating the market, desperate for stories, who don't bother asking "is this really an event with cultural significance" anymore and report everything at maximum volume

ten people on a livejournal friend group send emails to an info@ address that isn't monitored

every news source: And Fans Are Not Backing Down Until They Get What They Want

there have always, always, always been Snow Crab Proposal Guys, people who didn't like an episode of seaQuest DSV and have gone from typewritten letters to email to constant tweet barrages in their decades-long harassment of the creators

some of them are extremely entitled, some need therapy, none of them are an event. mass media creators have long had secretaries employed to filter through and throw out all these messages. they don't even know anyone is complaining - until the "news" outlets talk about it.

the news outlets didn't used to talk about it. now they do. now it's impossible for anyone to not know that people didn't like something that happened on TV.

it's impossible to not know what's in the news now. it's shoved everywhere, absolutely pervades all communication channels. "the fans" probably have more impact now than they ever have before, but it has nothing to do with "the fans" being angrier than they were before

"the fans" have been angry since before the word was invented